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Published: July 13th 2010
Dream Sculpture
Nothing says 'travel' like a 20 metre high head of a sleeping girl. Ratings explained:
'Bad times' - self explanatory
'Don't bother' - self explanatory
1* - worth a look
2* - Good Times
3* - Unmissable
I expect people to filter the rating through their own travel desires so if you know you hate museums you can downgrade a 3* museum to a 'Don't Bother'.
The England part of our trip is done, the content is a summary of my more detailed travel diary which is everything I can think to write about each day as we go. It's a bugger to keep a detailed diary as it takes at least one hour to update daily and when you fall behind it takes a lot of writing time to catchup.
Our trip commences with our last days living in England, a fairly significant milestone for us since we've called England 'home' since late 2006. The plan was to see a few things we still want to see in England then finish up with a day or two in London and then fly out.
Clearly our sacrifices to the weather gods were inadequate because we've been punished with rain; so far we've had overcast and rain more often than not, and
Why the weather's no good!
Alicia and I should have heeded this warning and been more generous in our offerings to the weather gods. the closer we get to a charming coastal attraction or beach the more rain and wind we get. Our hubristic hopes of having a sunny holiday in the British Isles were foolish indeed.
Let me now segway into a story about cars and shoes.
On our first day of travel after Nick finished his last day of work we visited the Dream Sculpture (2*) in St Helens in the North West a 12 metre high white sculpture of a sleeping girls head; we enjoyed it as a quick and rewarding stop. On departure Nick put his only shoes on the car roof whilst getting changed out of work clothes (my hiking boots intended to be the one and only shoes I need for the whole 6 months excluding my sandals).
Receiving a phone call mid way through changing we were sufficiently distracted for Nick to leave his shoes on the roof whilst he sat in the passenger seat to talk, and Alicia drove us away. Presumably the shoes weren't noisy enough when clattering off the car roof for us to notice their loss!
Later at Motorway services we stopped in from the car park for a quick milkshake,
Thatched buildings of Devon
Alicia and I are suckers for thatched buildings, they're so darn scarce and charming on our return to our hire car we found some absolute dickhead had scraped their white car along the side of our driver side door; then had the noble instinct to drive away as quick as possible rather than leave us a note or wait for us. This left us feeling our 550 pound excess on the hire car was in jeapordy and really soured the first day; we were basically 650 pounds out of pocket within 3 hours of starting our trip with the combined loss of the shoes and car insurance excess.
I dearly dearly wish ill upon the swine who scratched our car then did a runner, I hope Karma punishes this person to at least the tune of 1,000 pounds and preferably some kind of painful and awkward rash too.
After feeling bad about the probable loss of 500+ pounds we arrived eventually to our pub in Devon after 9pm to and only then we got out to unpack realised the shoes were lost; good to be kicked when we're down! A very good meal of Duck breast for Alicia and fish & chips for Nick cheered us up.
Now we've entered Devon & Cornwall
The Devon coast
Now this is a scene we'll pull the car off the road for! and we did. (and throughout this Travel blog) prepare to have all beaches we visit in the world compared to (and usually found wanting against) Australia's beaches where Alicia and I grew up on the central coast of NSW and Sydney.
Our travels in Devon found us some charming small towns, many of which were literally ghost towns with not a person in sight at any time. We had some decent sunshine (the gods hadn't realised the insufficiency of our sacrifices yet obviously) and enjoyed a beachside town and some fine views along the coast.
We stupidly opted into a narrow cliffside road that was only 87% of a car wide and drove along this narrow track white knuckled for an hour struggling to avoid plunging off the cliffs on the right and crashing into the trees and stones on either side. We took great pleasure in being lucky enough that the only cars we met coming towards us on this narrow track ended up being the ones who had to back up to find a passing place as reversing on that goat track would be hellish.
At the town of Clovelly (1*) we discovered that the locals feared the sea
Happy Alicia
Alicia enjoying one of the many tiny harbour villages of Devon or Cornwall; can't recall which! so greatly they'd built a tremendous fortifying sea wall at least 1,000 metres high to create themselves a harbour. I've never seen such a big sea wall, it seemed dozens of generations of this tiny village must have committed all their time and energies to building it and it seemed overzealous, although we were there on a calm day at a moderately low tide....
We took in our first Cornish beaches at Portreath (1*) and then at the Estuary near Padstow (2*) and found both to be very nice. Portreath in particular was the first of many Cornish beaches to remind us of Australia; with a similar look with the sand and cliffs, and the smell of the ocean and seaweed. Padstow had a remarkable location with a beach on a pretty river estuary, fine views of the ocean, river mouth, and a great little harbour too.
We started our next Cornish day at Tintangel (Don't Bother); several days after moving out of our Manchester flat Nick was still sneezing out all the dust from our cleanup and set a world 'consecutive sneezing record over a half hour period'; unfortunately since I achieved the record outside of regulated competition
Old boats with Character
Plenty of boats end up on the mud when the tide goes out, these ones had a lot of charm. it won't count as official.
Not being great seafood fans we didn't eat too much of it but did have some very good salt & pepper floured squid in Cornwall. Finest beer of the trip goes to one Cornish Ale; the Honey Monster that was particularly good.
Visiting the Tate Modern (Don't Bother) in St Ives (2*) helped re-inforce our contempt and dislike for modern art; it highlighted exactly the kind of things that make people sneer at modern art.
Alicia declared that a child could have created all of the works we saw.... possibly an untalented, intoxicated child working with their left hand and blind folded...... (makes you wonder why we keep checking out modern art doesn't it?!)
Newquay (2*) wins the reward for most desirable location; despite us visiting in the least desirable weather: a very stiff wind with moderate rain.
Newquay has a number of sandy bays, fine grassy clifftops between, plenty of pleasant houses like you'd see in a beach city like Bondi, and a particularly large and fine surf beach too. You could transplant Newquay exactly as it is into the Australian coastline and it would fit in just fine; although the significantly
Minack Panorama
The leaden skies take away a bit of impact on this shot but still the Minack theatre is absolutely stunning as is the setting. colder weather would no doubt confuse punters......
A couple of nights of staying in hostels that don't provide towels helped us both revisit our repressed traumas of using light microfibre towels (from previous backpacking). Yes these handy towels pack well and do the job but they're so small, a bit uncomfortable, and get wet quickly, and they're a little hard to dry. Generally one tolerates the necessity of these but they're a tool one can never love.
Our highlight of the whole of our remainder of the time in England was our visit to the Minack Theatre (3*) a small, open air theatre built into the cliffs above a picturesque section of coast at the far South-West end of Cornwall near lands end. We didn't see a show (bad luck on timing) but you don't need to to appreciate this amazing setting, nor do you need to like 'the theatre' to find it a great sight to see.
Basically it's a combination of an ancient Greek tiered theatre, set amongst hanging gardens, in a stunning cliff top location with great views up and down the coast; all very well cared for and cultivated. Hopefully the photos can do
The tides out
The colourful harbour villages and army of boats all look a little different when all the water disappears it some small justice, we saw it in heavy grey skied weather.
Last memorable stop in Cornwall was the charming seaside village of Polperro (2*) which has tiny harbour and bags of charm; Alicia's favourite this was a re-visit from a previous trip.
Nothing else notable from Cornwall aside from the sad lack of pirates in Penzance (but there was quite a lot small arrrrrt galleries), yummy Cornish pasties and a zillion mile drive to finish our last Cornwall day and get us to Heathrow. Penzance = (Don't Bother) rating by the way.
Alicia booked us a hotel near Heathrow in a neighbourhood where the local murderers were fighting a vicious turf war with the local muggers and we arrived there late at night! Thankfully their tide of violence was self contained and surged around us without troubling us and we had a very fine stay there for the one night. We ate our breakfast cereal with some alcoholics who were on their second pint by quarter to nine.
Everyone knows London (3*) is crammed with good times but here's our highlights from some of the more obscure things we did and enjoyed.
Windsor Castle (2*) had
St ives charm
We may hate modern art but St Ives was still packed with charming places. Nick's a sucker for memorable doors. some remarkable rooms and artifacts and if you've not been to 900 palaces and castles around Europe like Alicia and I and can only see a few you could do a lot worse than seeing Windsor. Any readers of Bernard Cornwall's 'Sharpe' series you can see the Tipoo's golden tiger headpiece here!
We went to the British Library (2*) where we saw hand written lyrics by the Beatles including John Lennon who pinched his sons birthday card to write on; it was fascinating how some of the most famous hits were scribbled on whatever was at hand.
Also hand written compositions from Beethoven that were full of corrections and changes that made it feel “real”. Other original writing from memorable historical figures included Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and Henry VIII. We also saw a Guttenburg bible and a 1215 copy of Magna Carta (look up the significance of these items yourself!).
In London we saw the shows: Phantom of the Opera (3*), Sweet Charity (2*) - funny and feel good, and Love Never Dies (fair not quite a 1*).
We went to the British Army museum (2*) where Alicia was slain with boredom but Nick enjoyed and wanted
The happy couple
Nick & Alicia, on holidays, in the Minack Theatre? Now that's what we call good times! more time for (covers the army from 1083- modern times), and the Old Operating Theatre Museum (2*) where we learned a lot about 19th century medicines, herbs, and old-style surgery with hack saws and no anaesthetic. The Old Operating Theatre was a fairly different and interesting museum where we learned a lot; such as: that the lives of children were historically always the LOWEST priority for medical treatment and kids were ill treated and died in droves; what a contrast to the way things are today!
And that was that for England; we've lived there for about 3 ½ years and there certainly things we'll miss but the excitement of commencing our 'once in a lifetime trip' has stopped us dwelling too much on this milestone departure.
Hope you've enjoyed, next update will cover Ireland.
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Mum & Dad Grunseit
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last of england Blog
we can see why you're blogging and not just emailing We LOVED it !!!! What a wonderful start to your big adventure home. At least it will be a fine diary for you. If you don't write it up as you go you will never remember all you have done. I think you will not have sacrificed an hour each night. We loved Clovelly, St Ives and Tintagel. I think the time of year and the weather (sunny, blue no wind ) made these places charming for us. Will print out this blog for next time we are in England - We want to do more of the Cornwall Devon coast. Lots of rain here and cool We have now painted the front room,hall, toilet, laundry.Built in mirror wardrobe in front room all toys packed away Just bookshelves and trundle bed- very tidy, as is my made over laundry. We want to work on Steph's old bedroom next. We have regardened down the side leading to the front door. Iceland next for you Much love Mother and Don XX